iStream.com to bring Euro 2012 live on the internet in India

The Euro 2012 European football championship will be streamed live on the internet in India thanks to a tie-up between Neo Sports, the official broadcast partner for the event, and video portal iStream.com.

The Euro 2012 broadcast on Neo Sports will be streamed live on a dedicated segment within istream.com and fans would also have access to the content on demand for a full month both through www.neosports.tv and the www.istream.com sites, a company statement said.

"Fans would also be able to access and enjoy extensive support programming around the event, including pre- and after-match highlights, team and player stats, profiles, trivia and other related clips from the mega football event, being jointly hosted by Poland and the Ukraine," the statement added.

Neo Sports, the all sports channel, has the exclusive television broadcast rights across the Indian subcontinent.

The tournament, one of the biggest events in the global football calendar, is expected to attract a cumulative audience of 4.3 billion and a global live television audience of 1.1 billion, with an estimated 55,000 hours of TV coverage across 220 countries.

"Neo Sports is thrilled to provide fans of football the full Euro experience on the internet. We hope to provide fans with an unparalleled experience through this association with istream.com," said Neo Sports Broadcast COO Prasana Krishnan.

"We believe that football has a strong pull among the internet audiences in the country and this is part of our overall strategy to build a strong sports vertical for istream.com. We plan to bring in more such exclusive partnerships in the online video space," said iStream founder and CEO Radhakrishnan Ramachandran.

iStream.com adds hundreds of new videos every day to its library of over a 100,000 clips of premium news bulletins, TV shows and movies in five Indian languages from over 50 channels. It also streams 26 news channels - in English, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam - live 24x7.

Last year iStream.com raised $5 million from global private equity fund SAIF Partners. It was SAIF’s first investment in the online video space. The $1.25 billion fund counts online travel services firm MakeMyTrip and local search company Just Dial among its top portfolio companies.